


Orphans of the Storm

by Prochytes



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Competition, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28918716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: A mysterious rival challenges Jesse to a race. The stakes are higher than she can imagine.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Orphans of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Arrow_ to 8x01: “Starling City” and _The Flash_ to 6x02: “A Flash of the Lightning”. Angst and canonical character death.

Red skies over Central City again, this morning.

No one enjoyed walking around in such weather, even though the day itself was balmy, and unmarred by the storms of the night before. When Jesse stepped out of S.T.A.R. Labs for her pre-brunch patrol, the faces of the few pedestrians looked dour, and flushed by the tints of the scarlet sky. Their eyes were trained downwards on the sidewalks, to avoid the remnants of the rain. The drying puddles looked like blood.

All the same, Jesse was glad for the excuse to leave the lab. Harry was preoccupied, as he had been for several days. At first, Jesse had worried that the ever-accelerating return of her father’s full intelligence was turning him back into the abrasive man who had stormed off to Earth-1 and helped thwart the Enlightenment. That had been wrong, though. There was still an easy kindness to Harry she had not seen before DeVoe. Now, Jesse was more concerned that her father – already capable, again, of making connexions that even she had missed – was keeping theories about the weather to himself. Putting such thoughts to the back of her mind, Jesse set out, at an undemanding jog, into a world of russet and vermillion.

She was barely cracking a Mach in two when she saw the stranger.

***

The stranger stood, motionless and face averted, in the plaza at the corner of Fifth and Park. She wore a figure-hugging outfit of white and blue, the latter blackened by the sullen sky. The workmanship of the suit was familiar enough to bring Jesse up short, about twenty feet behind her.

“Who are you?” Jesse asked.

The stranger turned. Jesse took a step back. The stranger’s gaze burned with crimson light.

“Ah – Jesse Quick.” The voice was the distorted rasp that came from sandpapering a larynx with the Speed Force. “They say you’re pretty fast. I don’t see it, myself.”

“Who are you?” Jesse held the blazing stare. “I won’t ask again.”

“To know me, Jesse Quick,” the stranger smiled, “you’ll have to catch me.”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed, as gold sparked behind them. “Game on, bitch.”

And the plaza was empty, but for the slow descent of uplifted fliers, and the fresh wounds of red and golden lightning.

***

The stranger was fast. The stranger was very fast. Jesse knew inside the first millisecond of the pursuit that she wasn’t chasing down some second-stringer, who’d blundered on the drugs, tech, magic, or whatever that could give any punk a semblance of speed. This woman moved like a Flash.

Or the reverse.

The stranger’s red lightning reeked of the Negative Speed Force. Had Thawne found himself an acolyte, or a groupie? Hell, for all Jesse knew, her new rival _was_ Thawne. According to Barry, The Reverse-Flash treated bodies like wardrobe options. Maybe he was behind the crimson skies. Thawne was definitely the type to paint the ether the colour of his ego.

Hypotheses could wait. The mystery woman had set a taxing pace, but Jesse still had plenty in the tank. She began to whittle away at the gap between them.

The stranger glanced over her shoulder. She saw Jesse closing, and wrinkled her pretty nose. The moue was incongruous, beneath that hellish gaze. The stranger turned her face forward once more; the red wake peeled away, replaced by one of purple, shot through with gold. She ran faster.

Jesse winced as she toiled to match, to better, the lithe figure in her sights. Second by punishing second, she edged nearer. Amidst all the sleeting miles of the contest (how had they not yet left Central City?), these were the only inches that mattered.

The toll on Jesse’s stamina was severe. There were the beginnings of a weave in the stranger’s steps, a roll in her shoulders. The heightened pace was telling on her, as well. Jesse heard the ground-bass of laboured breath as she closed to within a couple of feet; saw the bright hues of their duelling lightnings jewel a sheen of sweat on her opponent’s face, as she reached out to grab…

The mystery speedster started at the grip on her shoulder; stumbled; and fell. Long legs tangled, pulling Jesse down. The two tumbled forwards, wreathed in gold and purple and gold again. At last, they rolled to a halt, momentum spent.

The race was done.

***

“You… you beat me.” The stranger’s chest heaved beneath Jesse’s hand. She had hastened to pin her opponent as soon as they came to rest, despite the mystery woman’s lack of resistance. A speedster learned early that a fight didn’t always end because a race had. “You are… _so_ schway. Well done!”

Jesse frowned, as she, too, gasped for air. The stranger, whose voice now lacked the harsh reverb of the Speed Force, sounded a little chagrined at her defeat, but otherwise mysteriously elated. That wasn’t a typical Rogues’ Gallery reaction. “You’re caught. Spill. Who… who the hell are you?” Jesse looked around; her eyes widened. “And where the hell are we?”

“Hell… is the next town over,” the stranger panted, following Jesse’s gaze. “This is Hypertime.”

The ground beneath the mystery speedster’s back, Jesse realized, was a wall. Surfaces (horizontal or vertical, solid or aquatic) were all much of a muchness for top-notch speedsters, but that shouldn’t be the case when they were stationary. Jesse craned her neck. The vault above her head was city, too. There were no clouds, no angry weal of scarlet skies. Buildings reared at crazy angles, looming to graze a sidewalk heaven.

The architecture itself (if you tabled, for a moment, the acid-trip geometries) looked a lot like Central City. More accurately, it looked like a little of Central City, made to do a lot of work. As Jesse’s eye followed the strangeness to its vanishing point, she began to spot the same shapes recurring, in different configurations.

Someone had made a concrete canon of her town.

***

“If I say ‘uncle’ nicely, will you let me sit up?”

Jesse looked down into large, dark eyes, unmarred, now, by that daemonic red. She did not relax her grip. The Reverse-Flash had been in a wheelchair, when Barry first knew him. “You were tapping into the Negative Speed Force, at the start of our race.”

“I can’t hold that for long.” The stranger’s expression clouded. “It takes me to a very non-schway place. I only did it to be sure of your attention, and make sure that you would race me. Ditto the voice, the eyes, and the trash-talk.”

“You still haven’t told me who you are.”

“I’m Nora West-Allen. Iris West is my mom; Barry Allen is my dad. I think you’ve met my folks?”

“Not for a while.” Jesse regarded the pinioned twentysomething, and wrinkled her brow. “Looks like they’ve been busy.”

The stranger – Nora – blushed. “I’m from the future. The thing is: the future where they have me… the future where they have this version of me, anyways… can’t happen. I helped Mom and Dad make sure that it wouldn’t.”

“You’re an orphaned time-line,” Jesse frowned, “but you’re still here. That shouldn’t be possible, outside the Negative Speed Force.”

“The Negative Speed Force and, it turns out, Hypertime.”

“What is Hypertime?” Jesse asked, releasing her grip. Nora sat up and rubbed her arms.

“Imagine kiri…” Nora stopped, and started again “… imagine origami, with the multiverse as patterned paper. If you stare at the whole thing, it all lines up; look behind the creases, and things get freaky. Hypertime is what you find behind the creases of the multiverse. This bit of it abuts your Central City.”

“I didn’t know this place existed. Even Jay Garrick’s never mentioned it.”

“It didn’t. The origami… that’s a new development.”

“This place of yours looks very _Exception_.”

“ _Exception_?”

“The movie where thieves steal secrets from inside people’s heads?”

“Ah. That one had a different name on Earth-1. Multiversal variation, catch it while you ca….” Nora stopped again. She looked distracted for a moment before gabbling on: “I’ve actually done that, you know. ‘Excepted’ someone. Very much less schway than you would think.”

“Uh-huh.” Jesse’s eyes were on Nora’s fingers. They were plaiting together, ceaselessly, in her lap. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Absolutely.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Nora West-Allen?”

***

“Huh?” Nora’s eyes were immediately guarded, wary.

Jesse was undeterred. “Gate-crashing my Earth, cosplaying as Thawne to be sure of my attention… That’s an awful lot of trouble to find a sparring partner.”

“Totally worth it.”

“You really are Barry’s daughter, aren’t you?” The fingers folded; loosened; folded again. “Your father is a lousy liar, too.”

“I… I don’t know what you mean.”

“What are you keeping from me, Nora?” Jesse paused, playing back the conversation in her head. She paled. “Kirigami.”

“What?” The hands were now motionless in Nora’s lap.

“You were _going_ to say: ‘kirigami’.”

“I gabble; everyone says so.” Nora’s voice was brittle and bright. “it was just a slip of the tong…”

“Origami means folding paper. Kirigami means cutting it. You’re not keeping something back from me,” Jesse surged to her feet, and stared down at Nora; “you’re keeping me back from something.”

“Jesse, please,” Nora was scrambling up, “you have to listen…”

“Then you’ll have to catch me,” said Jesse.

She turned, and ran.

***

The geometries of Hypertime – now that Jesse was concentrating on them, and not focussed on chasing down a time-lost waif – were elegant, and enigmatic. Escher, going to third base with Lobachevsky. Starting from scratch, she would have been lost in moments. But Jay and Barry had taught her that a speedster’s wake persisted for several minutes after the lightning faded from mundane sight – a frail but instant thread, for Theseus to follow home.

The Speed Force rippled, not far behind. Jesse knew that Nora was at her heels. The cityscape across which they careened was losing its Rococo variations, as they neared the limits of Hypertime. It took a conscious effort, now, to run up walls. The architecture grew staid, as the race grew desperate.

 _Almost home._ Jesse felt warm breath on the back of her neck. _Find… find another gear_. Purple sparked in the corner of her eye. _You outran her once; you can do it agai…_ Wiry arms encircled her body. _Unnnghhh…_

***

Collisions on the mean side of the sound barrier always sucked at least a little for all concerned. Jesse had seen this once today, already; now, she was reminded. She shook her head to clear it, and squinted up into Nora’s face. The West-Allen progeny was kneeling on her midriff.

“One apiece!” Nora’s voice was still achingly chipper. Her eyes kept flickering nervously to the street ahead. “Looks like we’re even stevens at pursuit. Once we’ve got our breath back, what do you say to a straight sprint as the decider, to see who’s really The Fastest Girl Alive? The Inner Plane Probability Lines of the Seventh Dimension have this long clear stretch which is _totally_ schway…”

“Let me up, Nora.”

Nora bit her lip. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Don’t make me make you. After two races like that, we aren’t in any shape to wrestle.”

“OK.” Nora hung her head. When she spoke again, Jesse strained to hear her. “Promise me you won’t charge off again? There’s… there’s something you need to see. I was going to tell you; I really was. But I wanted to work up to it.”

“I don’t like being lied to, Nora.” Jesse sighed. “But yes: I promise.”

***

Nora stood, and helped Jesse to her feet. She might have inherited looks, drive, and incompetent mendacity from Barry and Iris; her statuesque parents hadn’t bequeathed their height. Nora West-Allen was a tiny woman. Jesse, no Amazon herself, could see over her head without any difficulty, as she moved, none too subtly, to block again the path back to the _echt_ -Central City.

“The boundary of Hypertime,” said Nora, pointing at the end of the street, “is around that corner. When you see what you see, _don’t_ rush into it. Understood?”

“Not really. But lead on.”

Nora trotted to the turning, with Jesse a little behind. “There,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Jesse looked. Around the turning, the world was blank. The street, and the buildings that flanked it, simply stopped. Beyond, there was only white, like the gutter of a comic-book – a matrix for meaning, which had none of its own.

“Don’t,” Nora hissed, as Jesse, heedless of her promise, started forward, only to feel the lightning within her flinch. “Listen to your speed; what’s it telling you? Running into that is suicide.”

“Where’s Central City?” Jesse wheeled on Nora, who took a timorous step back. “Where the _fuck_ is Central City?”

“It doesn’t exist,” said Nora. Her laborious gaiety had forsaken her; she looked small, and very tired. “Don’t think about time-jumping; you’ll only find that it never did. Its Hypertime projection is all that’s left. I’m an orphaned time-line, Jesse. But so are you.”

***

“You knew that this was going to happen.” Jesse felt rage crackling inside her. She wondered if her eyes now looked like Thawne’s.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you do anything about it?”

“I did.” Nora lifted her chin, and held Jesse’s gaze. “I rescued you.”

Jesse checked herself. “That was why you suckered me into that race?”

“Uh-huh. I can’t stop that,” Nora gestured at the whiteout, “happening to a universe. Believe me: I’ve tried. A Hypertime ghost doesn’t have many options. Conventional spacetime only accepts me if it’s already compromised; a universe I can breach is always on its last legs. There’s no time to save it, even for someone as fast as me – and crossing the barrier to Hypertime takes serious speed. Warning folks doesn’t work; they don’t believe me.”

“And so the challenge?”

“And so the challenge. Speedsters may not trust my prophecies of doom, but none of us can ever resist a race.”

“‘Speedsters’,” Jesse repeated. “How many times have you had to do this, Nora?”

“A few,” Nora looked away. “I try not to think about it.”

“How many times has it worked?” Ice had replaced lightning down Jesse’s spine. “How many have been able to keep up?”

“You’re the first." Nora blinked. “I’ve won a lot of races, and lost a lot of people.”

“Nora…”

“They didn’t have to die.” Nora wiped at her eyes. “If I were faster, if I were smarter, if I were _Dad_ , I’d have found a way.”

“You saved me.” Jesse laid a tentative hand on Nora’s shoulder. “And I like to think that I’m pretty smart. Together, we’ll work out a way to beat this.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” Jesse said firmly. It was a lie, but she didn’t intend it to stay one for long. Jesse could feel the shape of her grief – for her father, for her city, for her world – as one might feel, from the threshold, the size of a great cavern, in the dark. She would enter, and own, the grief, when she was ready. But that could wait. She wasn’t just Jesse Quick; she was Jesse Wells. Genius hubris had been in her blood long before the lightning joined it there.

Jesse Wells had work to do.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> Hypertime is a concept that originally appears in the DC Comics-verse with _The Kingdom_. "Inner Plane Probability Lines (the Seventh Dimension)" are mentioned, but never explained, in the 1st Edition _Advanced Dungeons & Dragons_ rulebook _Unearthed Arcana_. To use Nora's idiom, the name was way too schway not to give it an outing somewhere.


End file.
